Zimbabwe’s Nhimbe Trust has been selected for UNESCO support to run “Fearless Frontiers,” a Southern Africa–wide project focused on strengthening digital media capacities, promoting the ethical use of artificial intelligence and defending artistic freedom — the strongest AI-focused element in a wider tranche of four Southern African creative-sector initiatives backed under UNESCO programmes for artists and cultural professionals.
The Fearless Frontiers project is supported through UNESCO’s partnership with the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO. It will train young journalists to document and monitor artistic freedom issues, promote responsible and ethical approaches to AI, and support advocacy for the rights of artists and cultural practitioners across the region. Media professionals and cultural actors will be equipped with tools to monitor and defend artistic freedom, in what Nhimbe Trust and UNESCO frame as a bid to create a safer and more enabling environment for creative expression.
The Fearless Frontiers project’s AI-ethics component lands in a Southern African creative sector already grappling with the same questions that have surfaced elsewhere on the continent — how generative AI systems handle African cultural material, who is compensated when that material is used to train commercial models, and how artistic freedom is monitored in an increasingly synthetic media environment. iAfrica has previously covered arguments from University of Johannesburg leadership calling for an “AI equivalent of geographical indication” to protect African cultural provenance, and the Niyel-led ethical AI framework adopted by six Francophone West African countries. Nhimbe Trust’s project pushes the same conversation into practical training for the artists and journalists closest to the issue.
The project sits alongside three other Southern African initiatives selected under the same UNESCO round, though the others do not have an explicit AI focus.
Lesotho’s Department of Arts and Culture will implement its “Strengthening Artistic Freedom and Creative Economies” project, translating the country’s revised Arts, Culture and Heritage Policy into practical measures for artists’ rights, artistic freedom and creative entrepreneurship. It builds on recent reforms, including a copyright legislation review and the establishment of the Lesotho Copyright Society of Authors and Artists, and will focus on policy implementation, capacity-building and digital transformation across the creative sector, with the aim of giving artists better access to royalties, fair remuneration and stronger legal protections.
Afropolitan Explosiv, working with the Eswatini Theatre Club, will implement the “Southern African Creative Corridor” — a cross-border collaboration between South Africa and Eswatini aimed at strengthening the socioeconomic rights of rural artists. The initiative will establish a network of “Roaming Hubs” connecting communities across the two countries, introduce standardized cross-border artist contracts, and launch the African Creative Artforms Digital Index (ACADI) to protect indigenous knowledge and intellectual property while helping artists access digital markets. The project will focus on women artisans, youth creatives and rural practitioners.
Botswana’s Makgabaneng will run “Green Arts for Development: Strengthening Performers’ Rights and Cultural Governance,” targeting long-standing gaps in the country’s audiovisual sector. It will develop a sector-wide remuneration framework, establish a national performers’ directory and advocate for fair contractual practices, with the aim of moving artists away from once-off buyout agreements and toward systems that ensure fair remuneration, recognition and participation in cultural life.
The four projects sit within the broader UNESCO-Aschberg Programme for Artists and Cultural Professionals, which UNESCO says places particular emphasis on supporting initiatives in Africa and other regions where artists often face economic precarity, limited access to opportunities and restrictions on artistic expression.
